FWF Turns One: Our Favorite Stories So Far

A year ago, First We Feast popped up on the Internet like a little, blinking mole rat looking for someone to love it. One of the first people to tweet us was Funk Master Flex, which felt auspicious—we were going to be different and create a food website for people who, among other things, knew who Funk Master Flex is!

From there, it was off to the races, and in the space of that year we’ve published more than 2,500 stories. Needless to say, there were some embarrassing fails in the mix (at one point can we just delete “Women Drinking Beer on Pinterest” from the Internet?). But there’s also a lot of stuff we’ve done that I’m proud to say is ours.

At this milestone in the site’s young life, I wanted to take a look back at some of the highlights, and also to say thank you to everyone whose tweeted about First We Feast, told a friend about us, or just quietly read the site from time to time without making a big deal about it. The support is much appreciated, and I hope you like what we’ve built so far.

This is 2013 and the Internet, so I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to be nostalgic about something that has only existed for 365 days, right? Let’s do it anyway.—Chris Schonberger, editor-in-chief

Allan Benton, the King of Pork

Published: December 11, 2012
Link: Meet Allan Benton, the Man Behind America's Best Bacon
Benton's is synonymous with delicious smoked ham and thick-cut bacon, and it's a brand name at some of the country's best restaurants. The best part, though, is that Allan Benton is the most humble, wise old dude ever, and getting him to tell his story in his own words for the site is something I'm really proud of. His approach to his product is a reminder to be steadfast in your own conception of what quality means:
"Quality is always the bottom line. I once told my dad, a few years [into running the business], I thought I was going to go broke for sure. I told him I was going to have to start quick-curing my hams to compete. My father said, “Son, if you play the other guy’s game, you always lose.” Make it the best that you know how, no matter what it costs. Sooner or later, quality will sustain you in this business. And I think those words were prophetic. I wish my father had lived to see the success we enjoy now."
So real.

The Alex Stupak vs. DJ Dieselboy Nacho Cook-off

Published: February 3, 2013
Link: The Great Nacho Cookoff: Alex Stupak vs. DJ Dieselboy
Exploring the overlap between music and food has been a big part of what we do from the beginning, but I was determined to go beyond the three or four stars who are always in the media talking about being "foodies" (no shots, Gwyneth...actually, shots). So I was amped when I met Dieselboy, a deejay who is straight-up one of the biggest food obsessives I know in any industry. He ended up being an early columnist on the site, as did Empellón's Alex Stupak, a chef I had found intriguing since I first encountered him doing pastry at wd~50. Fortuitously, Dieselboy and Stupak already knew each other, so while I would have been terrified to suggest to Stupak that he should make some nachos, which have nothing to do with the Mexican food he makes, Dieselboy provided a great foil—he was able to turn it into a challenge, which Stupak gamely accepted. The actual cook-off was a blast, our judges took it super seriously, and everyone was impressed by Dieselboy's effort, even if the chips (pun intended!) were stacked in the chef's favor.

The Most Iconic Food Photos of All Time

Published: June 11, 2013
Link: The Most Iconic Food Photos of All Time
I like food porn just as much as the next Instagram junkie, but I really knew very little about the history of food photography and how we arrived at this current obsession. To create some context, we tapped photographers, chefs, and an art historian to nominate iconic food photos, and they opened my eyes to some amazing images. The one of Fidel Castro eating Chinese food and drinking a Coke is unbelievable.

A Blueprint for Hating Brunch

Published: January 23, 2013
Link: The Complete Guide to Hating Brunch
Jordana Rothman is a great friend and an incredible food writer. She writes plenty of excellent serious food stories, but she also has a hilarious, irreverent side that she lets out sometimes. I wanted to showcase that by unleashing her wit on something I knew she had strong feelings about. Even if you disagree, there is no way you could win this argument with her. It's just devastating blow after devastating blow.

Inside the Mind of a Fast-Food Savant

Published: December 3, 2012
Link: From Stuffed Crust to Smashburger: Inside the Mind of a Fast-Food Savant
We always had a goal of trying to avoid focusing entirely on highbrow chefs and explore food in all its manifestations, even fast food. Instead of just railing against crappy, mass-produced food or blindly celebrating Doritos Locos Tacos, we wanted to look at the inner workings of the fast-food industry—its history, its economics, and its ability to tap into the nation's psychology. It's turned out to be a pretty difficult thing to do, not least because finding people who will speak transparently about mega-corporations isn't easy, but I think we were able to pull the curtain back a little with this interview. Tom Ryan invented McGriddles, stuffed-crust pizza, and the Dollar Menu! I don't care if you think McDonald's is the devil and Taco Bell is worse than dog food—that's fascinating.

Robert Sietsema's History of Cooking with Weed

Published: August 14, 2013
Link:A Brief History of Cooking with Marijuana
Having Robert Sietsema write for the FWF has been sort of surreal, since he's such a lynchpin of the NYC food-writing world and someone I had read since long before I even got into food media. His brand of anti-establishment, hyper-obsessed chowhounding grew out of a life of eating on the road with musicians, which both proved that this whole music-food connection was not new at all, but also made him the perfect candidate to add some veteran perspective to our fledgling enterprise. Sietsema's tour of miniature hot dogs spots in and around Albany, NY was epic, but his investigation of the history of marijuana cookery was the most eye-opening.

Recreating the Junior's Cheesecake Walk

Published: June 18, 2013
Link: Recreating the Infamous Making the Band 2 Cheesecake Walk, 10 Years Later
I love writers who pitch ridiculous passion projects that clearly demonstrate that they are more interested in the story than how long it's going to take them or how hard it's going to be. So I was immediately on board when Ryan Joseph said to me, "It's the 10th anniversary of the cheesecake walk from Puff Daddy's Making the Band, and I want to recreate it from start to finish." He did it—in sweltering heat, no less—and it was totally weird, enlightening, and awesome.

How to Avoid Instagram Struggle

Published: November 20, 2012
Link: The Pro Guide to Taking Better Instagram Photos
This was basically a public service to the Internet. There's no point in pretending that any of us are going to stop taking food photos at restaurants, so we might as well try to do it well. Shout out to Jolie Ruben for showing us how.

Rappers and Cookbooks

Published: January 11, 2013
Link: This Is the Remix: 5 Fantasy Food-Rap Cookbooks
Even though we're a young website, we're lucky to have access to incredible designers in our offices at Complex. We put them to work by imagining what would happen if rappers took over some of the year's hottest cookbook titles. These images represent First We Feast better than anything else I can think of, and the fact that this story spawned a Twitter conversation between Ghostface and Andrew Zimmern is just the best:

The Debut of Oscar the Dog Critic

Published: August 7, 2013
Link: Rachael Ray's Dog Recipes, Reviewed by an Actual Dog
If you're heart is not warmed by the epic tale of Oscar the Pup, I don't know what to say to you. It all started when I was looking around Rachael Ray's website one day (yeah, what of it?!) and found all these pet recipes. I was so confused—that had these ridiculous, punny names and were made mostly with what I would consider human food, but they appeared to be real. At first we were going to make some and feed them to our interns in a blind taste test—very glad we scrapped that idea. Instead, writer Seamus McKiernan took on the challenge of cooking for his dog Oscar for a week, and letting Oscar review the dishes. Oscar's star-power was evidence to all those who witnessed his Instagram-video performances, and the next thing you know, he was on national TV alongside Rachael Ray. Of all the things that have happened in the past year, I am most proud of Oscar's rise to fame. He deserves it.

Knife Skills, in GIFs

Published: April 19, 2013
Link:GIF Tutorial: Essential Knife Skills with a Mission Chinese Cook
I always find it hard to follow written instructions when it comes to cooking techniques. Watching videos is easier, but I have to rewind countless times to catch the nuances. So I thought that by breaking lessons into GIFs that repeated each specific step over and over, it would make learning new skills a lot easier. This tutorial was the first in the series, and I think it remains the best just because it's so basic. Cutting stuff is one of the most fundamental things you do in the kitchen, and unless you're already pro, this guide will change your whole outlook on wielding a knife.

Foodgasms!

Published: October 10, 2012
Link: What We Can Learn from Analyzing Celebrity-Chef Foodgasms
This was the first essay to ever appear on the site, accompanied by this GIF gallery of celebrity foodgasms. I knew people were going to see First We Feast for the first time and immediately compare it to the food sites they already went to, so I wanted have something for them to read that would be a little askew from the norm. And, to be honest, I wanted to make some Giada GIFs, so this happened and I'm not mad that it did.

The Definitive Guide to Heavy Metal and Beer

Published: July 22, 2013
Link: Headbangers Brew: A History of Heavy Metal and Craft Beer Collaborations
Before anything else, I am a beer nerd. The whole way I got into food writing in the first place was through beer—I was working at Time Out NY, and I kept asking the Food & Drink editor at the time, Gabriella Gershenson, if I could write about beer. This turned into reviewing bars under the tutelage of my other mentor in the game, Jordana Rothman, and eventually getting into restaurants, cocktails, and everything else. (Thank you, beer!).
Anyway, it was a huge goal of mine to have great craft-beer content on First We Feast that pushed beyond the sort "hey, look at those crazy beers!" attitude that still pervades so much of mainstream media. There are a lot of beer stories on the site that I'm proud of, but this one felt particularly unique, and it was a story I had never read anywhere else. Though I'm clearly hop-hop obsessed now, I grew up on a steady diet of Slayer, Anthrax, and Sepultura, so seeing how this metal culture connects to the beers I love now was really cool.

Food Taboos

Published: January 3, 2013
Link: 20 Things Everyone Thinks About the Food World
Being a new, upstart food site meant we had to scrap for eyeballs and convince people we weren't totally irrelevant, but it also put us in a unique position to be able to talk about issues that would be tough to broach within the context of a more established brand. So this was kind of that Wild West approach to blogging where we just said F it and talk about all the stuff that gets discussed privately in the food world but, for the most part, doesn't really make its way into print. So we did, and it blew up. We've had other viral stories, but this one was the only one that was viral within the food community, which was really satisfying because it showed maybe we could help foster real discussion rather than just throwing words into the ether. And I'm not going to front like I didn't get super hyped when Ruth Reichl tweeted about it.

One Dude Being Weird About Nachos

Published: January 29, 2013
Link: The Great Nacho Hunt
This essay is the realest thing I ever wrote. I had been wanting to share it for a while, but the last outlet that was going to publish it decided in the 11th hour that it was too weird. Well, now I have my own website, so I can do what I want, mu'fuckers! Seriously though, this story means a lot to me. Eating nachos with my brother and learning about the foodways that spawned this dish opened the door to realizing that there's more to food than just deliciousness. (But yo, nachos are mad delicious, obvs.)

Imagining a World with Better Food Emoji

Published: March 5, 2013
Link: 15 Food Emoji We Wish Existed
And yet, even with a new iPhone out, we still don't have a nachos emoji. SMH x infinity.

Real Talk with Roy Choi

Published: January 14, 2013
Link: The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Roy Choi
The "10 Dishes That Made My Career" series is the lynchpin of First We Feast. Before we launched, I knew I wanted to create a place where we could look at food in interesting and sometimes irreverent ways, whether through the lens of rap music or by saying things that other outlets didn't want to say. But I also wanted to treat food and the people who make it with the veneration they deserve, and show that being a "foodie" isn't about Instagramming a kale salad or ticking off a bucket-list of hot restaurants, but about the stories that go into what's on our plates. I pitched it as a "Behind the Music" for the food world, and I have been amazed week after week by how thoughtful chefs, bartenders, and brewers are about their craft. It's impossible to pick one favorite, but I loved Roy Choi's "10 Dishes" because he has such an unique perspective on the food world and seems to be able to navigate the highbrow and the lowbrow without ever losing track of his own personal philosophy about eating and feeding people. For more real talk from Roy, check out this crazy interview.

Sushi Decoded

Published: March 11, 2013
Link: 15 Common Sushi Myths, DebunkedHigh Life Decoded is one of my favorite series that we've done on the site. There's so much hype and misinformation around food these days that it's incredibly easy to get ripped off. And beyond that, it's just cool to know about all the products that you see on menus all the time—oysters, whiskey, etc.—so you can order better things and pass that information onto your friends. For me, the most eye-opening installment so far was on sushi. Americans have very skewed ideas about sushi, and I think the expert Trevor Corson did a great job of breaking down the "rules" while also understanding that it's okay to break some of them outside of Japan.

The Best Food Moments in the Wire

Published: February 14, 2013
Link: The 25 Best Food Moments in The Wire
One of the reasons the Wire was such an amazing show was due to the level of detail—every choice seemed to have a purpose. Looking at the show through the lens of food is a great example. Food plays a crucial role in creating a sense of place, and every meal is packed with symbolism that relates to the broader themes of the series.

Inside the Strangest Banquet of All Time

Published: March 6, 2013
Link: The Night I Ate Raccoon, Bobcat, and Coyote with Baron Ambrosia
Jenni Avins went to the Bronx Pipe Smoking Society Small Game Dinner and wrote evocatively about some of the oddest people and foods I've ever heard of. This whole thing honestly sounds like it took place in a different world, but it was only a short train ride from FWF HQ.

A Celebration of Food Rap

Mission: Umami Cronut Burger

Published: July 29, 2013
Link: Meet the Umami Cronut Burger
Sometimes, it's the dumbest ideas are the best. We had collectively reached a moment of Cronut fatigue at this point in the summer, when the media coverage had just gone completely bonkers and the lines for the pastry were looking more lemming-like than ever. Then, when Umami Burger hype started to reach fever pitch, it was sort of like, "Okay, here we go again." We didn't want to not cover it, but we also didn't want to end up doing so in the same way the 20 other websites might. So we decided to just act stupid and create a hypebeast monster by combining the Cronut and the Umami Burger into one disgusting mashup. All praise to our intern Matthew Schonfeld who braved both lines to make it happen.

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